"How long are you funded?"

In my experience at Heylog, I often encountered a common concern from larger customers: they wanted to know our financial runway, or more precisely, how long we were funded.

This question wasn't just about our current financial health. It was really about assessing the risk of doing business with an early-stage startup. They needed to be sure that we could sustain operations for as long as our business relationship lasted.

My response was always honest. We had secured funding for more than a year ahead and were actively pursuing additional financing to ensure the continuity of the company.

Financial runway is by no means an indicator for reliability

The reality, however, is that mostly profitable businesses, as small as they might be, are the companies you really want to do business with – and not the heavily funded startups who yet have to to figure out how to build a lasting (= profitable) business.

The company went public in late 2021 via a SPAC merger, but in a crowded market built on questionable economics, its stock went into a perennial nosedive, with its market cap dropping from more than $2 billion at its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) debut to just $70 million 12 months later.